I've got a Triwatt kit arriving later this week and couldn't be more excited. At the moment, I don't have a dedicated speaker and cab for it yet.
But I do have an old (tubed, 130W RMS) Peavey Heritage VTX 212 combo with two 12" Black Widow speakers that's been sitting in an (air conditioned) indoors closet for about 35 years - no humidity exposure or anything. I tried firing it up today but as expected the tubes (four 6L6) are pretty shot and the whole amp is caked in dust and scratchy pots; at least I'm pretty certain that its the tubes that are shot and not the speakers (no visible tears or anything on them). It had all the tonal symptoms of dying tubes.
The Peavey is my dad's and it hasn't been used since the late 1980's, and I don't think I've ever used it. From what I've read these Black Widows are very clean - does anyone have any experience with them? My main goal with the Triwatt is to chase Gilmour tones, so I imagine the more clean headroom out of the speaker, the better, assuming these two are in working order after I get them cleaned up?
The Peavey's two 12's are wired at 4 ohms, and they're very powerful. This amp was sold with either the 212 Black Widow speakers mine has, or with 212 Peavey Scorpion speakers. The only manual (
https://peavey.com/manuals/80343005.pdf) I can find online is spec'd for the Scorpion speakers so I'm not certain what the wattage is of the Black Widows.
Links:
https://peavey.com/manuals/80300801.pdf - A Peavey speaker catalog from 1993; pretty certain the Heritage VTX amps used the 1203-4
https://usspeaker.com/peavey%201203-4bw-1.htm - Not certain but I think this is it
In summary:
1) Does it appear safe to use the Triwatt head through this old combo's speakers? They're heavy as all hell so ideally I'd like to just plug the Triwatt straight into them still in the Peavey Heritage combo cabinet to be certain they're working 100% before I mess with pulling them out and putting them in a 212 cabinet.
2) Assuming I can use them, would it be better to just use one of the speakers given their power? Or can I go ahead and use both? It's very unlikely I'd ever use the Triwatt for gigging, and it would be played only in a home music room and occasionally jamming with a few friends in a practice space.
3) Does anyone know anything about these and have thoughts on how you like them? How do they compare to say a Fane, Thames, FC12, Reeves Vintage Purple for getting in the ball park of that Gilmour tone? (Gertjan's old post with his Gilmour recordings using a Vintage Purple sound great)
In the end this may be just a temporary solution until I order new speakers to pair with the Triwatt, but if I end up liking them then that'd be great.
My other temporary options if this is not feasible is using either the 112 combo speaker in my 15W Vox AC15C1 (12″ Celestion G12M Greenback), or the 112 combo speaker in my 50W Marshall Origin 50C (Celestion G12N-60 Midnight 60 (16Ω, 60W). I also have a Two Notes Torpedo Captor X 16 Ohm reactive loadbox/IR loader/attenuator.
Thanks.